Ugly days swirl all around us and there is nothing left to say that could undo the wretched and the savage. Every human life is sacred, and I don’t engage with anyone who believes that there is a more morally righteous side to the current conflict of which self defence legitimises the extermination of refugee camps, civilian hospitals, a heritage church, UN schools and so on and so forth.

There is a belligerent occupying force, breaches of UN resolution 194, 237, 242, 338, 446, 452, 465, 478, 497, 904, to name a few and I am not even going to start naming UN Human Rights Council Resolutions passed between 2008-2014 or the Amnesty International Report published on February 1, 2022 documenting the unlawful actions of the occupying power. All of these atrocities predates October 7, 2023 but unsurprisingly did not garner the same horrified response by power holders and media actors, who rabidly believe that some human life are less valuable than others. There is fact-checked, evidence based data collection compiled by international organisations and different advocacy bodies and I personally know of people living in the heart of the conflict- international observers who bore witness to the inhumanity of the occupying force. It is a case of whether people are interested to look for information in order to obtain clarity- or merely to confirm their own racist and xenophobic prejudices.

My prayers are for the oppressed people of the world- we have failed you and in doing so we have failed ourselves. Meanwhile I have nothing to offer by way of putting the fire of which we burn in but these photographs taken by a weary heart of a place which offered some completion and contemplation in these past few days.